Down the Rabbit Hole
by NikoArtagnan
Summary: When a road trip ends in tragedy, I, armed with a fracturing mind, a strange assortment of weaponry, and my own sarcastic wit, must discover the secrets of my family's past and my connections to a very scary videogame in a world where pirates rule the seas and everyone, it seems, is out for my head. Crossover with American McGee's Alice
1. Chapter Zero - It Begins

**Down the Rabbit Hole**

When a road trip ends in tragedy, I, armed with a fracturing mind, a strange assortment of weaponry, and my own sarcastic wit, must discover the secrets of my family's past and my connections to a very scary videogame in a world where pirates rule the seas and everyone, it seems, is out for my head.

**Warnings:** Foul language out the wazoo, mental disorders, angst like whoa, crossover with American McGee's Alice, story not beta-read, alcohol/drug abuse, overuse of italics/commas/exclamation points, OC-Insert, more warnings will come when needed.

Just a little something to satiate my immense love for American McGee's Alice, and also to overcome my writer's block on my other stories.

* * *

**Chapter Zero**

It Begins

* * *

_There was blood in the water that was rushing into the car. Blood and lots of it. _

_I kept reaching for the Arab man sitting in the driver's seat. He gasped and twitched, scrabbling at the metal pipe that had gone straight through his chest._

_"Noooooo," I moaned, trying to shut out his dying gasps and sobs._

_The muscled dark-skinned man sitting in the passenger seat, an easy 6"8 in his bare feet, slammed his boots against the window, trying to break out._

_"Where's the fucking window hammer?!" Blonde haired and blue eyed, the girl to my right swore and kicked, struggling to fight off her faulty seatbelt. "You goddamn motherfuckers, where's the fucking window hammer?!"_

_"I. Don't. Have. It!" The African-American man roared back at her. "It ain't in the fucking car!"_

_The girl_ _to my left, with dreadlocked brown hair and black tattoos tracing over her brown skin, was sobbing, tears blurring her attempt to get free of the seatbelt._

_"Muhammad, you goddamn moron, couldn't you have bought a car with some workable **seatbelts**?!" the blonde screeched at the Arab man, whose blood was dripping out of the sides of his mouth._

_"Stop yelling at him!" Somehow I got the words past the hard knot and bitter tears in my throat as his thrashing began to slow._

_"Then you make the damn seatbelts work!" The blonde shoved me hard into the other girl. I heard a click and my seatbelt snapped free. I immediately shucked it off, and turned to help the dark-skinned girl._

_The water was almost to our mouths at this point._

_"Get a big breath of air and hold it!" I yelled at them. "When we submerge completely, open the doors and get out as quick as you can! Isaac, help Muhammad get out of his seat belt and get him to the sur-"_

_There was a horrible grinding, wrenching scream of metal being twisted in ways it should not be. I looked up and felt my mouth drop open as enormous, ghostly green, giant fingers pried the car's roof off._

_"Oh fuc-"_

_"What the hell-"_

_"No, no, noooo-"_

_"JESUS CHRIST!"_

_The water exploded in, even as I gulped down air and dove for the seatbelt release. My friends' yells died away into gurgles._

_The dark-skinned girl grabbed my arm, black eyes bugged out, air bubbles leaving her gaping mouth just before those ghostly fingers closed around my waist and yanked me skyward. The breath left my lungs in a whoosh and my eardrums exploded as I shot upwards, muting the world around me._

_I struggled in the giant hand's grip, even as blood ran from my ears and nose into the pitch black water._

_No, I moaned in my mind. No, no, stop this, my friends need me, let me go!_

_Something spoke then, a voice I heard in the very marrow of my bones, shaking my entire body like a six foot tall concert stereo._

**YOUR FATE LIES SOMEWHERE ELSE, LITTLE ONE. IT IS TIME TO GO.**

_What about my friends?! I screamed at the voice. They're going to die!_

**...THEY ARE OF NO CONSEQUENCE, IN THE GREATER SCHEME OF THINGS. THEIR DEATHS ARE A NECESSARY SACRIFICE YOU MUST MAKE.**

_I mentally howled my fury as blackness rushed in to obscure my vision, and the last thing I saw was the roofless car, sinking into the ocean's depths, the bright spots of color that were my friends still trapped inside._

_And I could do nothing to help them._

* * *

_I came to sometime later, on a bed of soft, springy grass._

_Everything spun, and for several moments all I could do was lie there, breathing slowly, eyes closed, as sounds and color returned, and the overwhelming nausea passed. The sun warmed the shakes from my bones, and lulled me into a blank-minded daze. I'm still not sure how long I lay there_

_"You're late!" It was a panicky voice that cut through my trance like a hot knife through butter. I cracked open an eye to see a…_

_A rabbit. Standing over me, wearing a top hat and tails._

_"You've got to be kidding me," I said in a voice that sounded as though it had been rubbed with sandpaper – gritty, hoarse, and raw._

_"Come, come, Alice. You're unbearably late and we have so little time to work with as it is! You must get up and follow me at once!"_

_I sat up and with one hand knocked the rabbit away from me. _

_"My name isn't Alice," I said coldly. "And I don't really give a damn about what you want. I have to help my friends." _

_I clambered to my feet as the rabbit made tiny little distressed sounds, hopping around me frantically._

_"But you must be Her! He would not have made a mistake, nosiree, and it is imperative that you come with me at once-"_

_I turned on the rabbit, feeling my skirts fly out around me. _

_"A last warning, rabbit, you'd better back the fuck off before I lose my temper and wring your bloody neck! I left my friends to die at the bottom of some godforsaken ocean and I…"_

_A sob cracked out of my throat, and the grief – unexpected, like a damnable tidal wave – dropped me to my knees._

_"Oh God, oh God, my friends, my friends!" I wept, beating my hands against the grass, digging large chunks out._

_"Oh, dear," the rabbit said, sounding impatient. "I understand you miss them, but they really aren't important here. You must come at once!"_

_I stared at him through the veil of tears masking my vision. _

_"What did you just say?" I asked dully, something beginning to pound in behind my eardrums._

_"I said, you have other things to worry about than them. They really don't mean anything in the grander scheme of things-grk!"_

_I grabbed the rabbit around the throat, red bleeding over my vision. "Are you in league with that voice?!" I roared, shaking him. "Answer me, damn you!"_

_"Well, if you stop crushing his throat he might be able to answer you better."_

_I whirled to face the newest speaker, dropping the rabbit as I did, and stopped dead. A tall, mangy, dark blue cat with strange tattoos sat there, smiling eerily at me._

_"Welcome back," he said softly. Was I just seeing things, or were those dark gold eyes full of empathy?_

_(And why were all the animals _talking_ in the first place? And why wasn't it bothering me overmuch?)_

_"Wh-what's going on?" I asked, looking around for the first time. It was a densely wooded forest, and we stood before an enormous oak, with gigantic roots spearing out of the ground, framing a hole in the ground. It looked just like the forest near my home._

_The cat shook its head sadly._

_"The Rabbit, for all his impetuousness, is right. You may not be the right Her, but you are a Her, in any case, so you'll have to do. Come along now."_

_I hesitated. The cat was a warm presence to me, and comforting in a way that should have been frightening, but wasn't. But still, this was all very strange and odd. And what about my poor friends? Whatever had become of them?_

_Then I realized why all this seemed so damned familiar. I swallowed past the lump in my throat._

_"Y-You're the Cheshire Cat," I said dumbly._

_He raised one eyebrow._

_"Did it take you that long to remember? Good Lord, girl. Anyway, you should follow me. We only have a little while before He comes to collect you and you should be as prepared for it as possible." And suddenly, he was right in front of me, eyeing me from head to toe._

_"This may be a quicker way, since you seem to be a bit more brain damaged than She was."_

_A paw lashed out and hit my chest with a great force, knocking me flying. I stumbled back, managing to get my hands out and wrapped around the tree's roots before I tumbled into the blackness behind me._

_"Je-Jesus Christ, the hell was that for?!" I asked, panting for air, as I struggled to pull myself out. One false step back, and I'd go right into the rabbit hole there…_

_I looked back._

_"Oh, now you've really got to be kidding me." _

_I looked up again, and gaped as the Rabbit appeared right in front of me, and gave me a glare._

_"_She_ wasn't half as irritating as you are." And he promptly hit me in the stomach with his cane, knocking me off balance. On pure reflex I took a step back, and swore when I felt the ground crumble under my feet._

_I fell through the hole, my heart in my throat for the second time in as many hours. _

_"You've become entangled in a game played between two monsters, Miss, and you'll need all the help you can get if you want to come out of it with some semblance of order in your brainpan, much less alive…But then again, you do have Her blood running through your veins…so saying you have any sanity at all may be stretching it."_

_With his words, the residual pain, fear, grief, and straight out exhaustion caught up with my defenseless mind and body, sending me into unconsciousness._

* * *

_"Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring." _― Margaret Atwood


	2. Chapter One - Escaping from Hell

**Down the Rabbit Hole**

When a road trip ends in tragedy, I, armed with a fracturing mind, a strange assortment of weaponry, and my own sarcastic wit, must discover the secrets of my family's past and my connections to a very scary videogame in a world where pirates rule the seas and everyone, it seems, is out for my head.

**Additional Warnings:** Slavery, misogynistic slurs, mental instability, implied non-con

When the protagonist is in Wonderland, it will be indicated by _italics_.

Chapter one begins, and now we get a look at our protagonist's life well after her encounter with the Cheshire Cat and White Rabbit. A great deal of time has passed since the last chapter, and our protagonist has changed…but for the better? Or the worse?

* * *

**Chapter One**

Escaping from Hell

* * *

I kept my eyes down. It didn't take a body long to learn what set off the men who ran this ship, and enduring the small abuses were better than enduring the sick things these freaks inflicted on those slaves who did try to fight back.

Oh yes, I learned very quickly.

Trapped on this godforsaken, stinking ship for weeks without any hope, filthy, verbally assaulted by ugly pirates who wanted to make a quick buck off selling me, forced to watch as the pirates broke the spirits of those too stupid to keep their heads down all the while knowing I had plenty of weapons but they were trapped in my goddamn mind…

At first I'd had the Cat to keep my mind company and to help me build my mental defenses, to train me in all the ways he said I would need – as he had done before I'd come to this new world - but in the past couple days – or, at least I think they were days, it was impossible to keep time in the reeking bowels of the ship where we were stored – he had not been in my mind when I'd gone to visit him.

I never thought about my friends. This ship was not a place to show weakness.

It would break me straight in half to remember them here. Their memories would be soiled if I brought them to this place. I kept their images stored in my mind palace, my own personal Palace of Hearts, a pristine tribute to the only people in the world who had ever loved me.

The shrieking and obscene grunts from the cage next to mine died away to quiet sobs and a satisfied sigh.

I closed my eyes and, to my surprise, _the Cat waited there._

_"__Are you ready?" he asked, not smiling._

_"__Ready for what?" I asked, my voice a permanent rasp resulting from the knife that had nearly sliced my neck to the spine during a _

_"__He didn't think you would be ready to do what you must in order to escape. So he kept your weapons away from you until you were ready."_

_"__I didn't think I could manifest my weapons in the real world," I told him, cocking my head to one side._

_"__You couldn't…before. But I do believe you're ready as you will ever be, and you'll definitely need it. Summon the Vorpal blade, Miss."_

_I closed my eyes, and felt its comforting weight enter my right hand, a shining steel, overlong butcher knife traced with intricate swirls._

_"__What should I do?" I asked him, feeling the blade's power hum a red-bright greeting to my bones._

_He smiled._

_"__What do you __**think**__, my dear?"_

I opened my eyes to the dark pit of the cages, the Vorpal blade still in my hand.

"'Ey, slut! Wake the fuck up, you need to go on deck for your washing." The beady-eyed pirate who had opened the door leered at me.

I kept a hand on the blade, but tucked it into the shadows, not moving from my seat propped up against the ship's wall. My cage was the last one in the lowest row of the ship.

The slavers every so often would pull us up to the main deck, and strip us naked, so they could wash the stink and filth from us with the high-powered hoses. The Captain didn't like the stink and the pirates got a free show of the naked, shrieking, miserable captives.

More than one woman had been taken to a dark corner after the baths.

I had been lucky in that regard. So very, very lucky.

But I'd done nothing. I'd done nothing while others suffered and bled and _died_ and that…

That ended today.

I waited, every muscle in my body tensed as the pirate groaned.

"Goddamnit, ye stupid cunt!" he thudded over to where I sat and reached down a meaty hand to yank me to my feet.

I exploded into motion, the Vorpal blade slicing through flesh and bone like a hot knife through butter. It was so _easy_. It was all so damned easy.

I could feel muscle coil under my flesh that hadn't been there, as health and power entered my emaciated frame, turning my body to the lean, muscled one I had gained after weeks in Wonderland, making the man a pitiful first (human) opponent.

It took less trouble to kill him than it would an Insidious Ruin, one of the dark, oily and machinated spawns of Wonderland's darker side. Even those weaklings took more effort on my part to kill than a human did.

_That could be dangerous,_ I thought to myself. _Killing should never be too easy._

I shook myself. I couldn't question my own morals now. I had to ride the cold hatred and rage I'd been festering my heart from weeks of abuse before I lost my nerve and didn't finish the job.

The corpse hit the ground as I made a fist with my left hand, enjoying how the tight muscles twined beneath my grimy skin. My tongue flicked out, tasting the blood splattered on my cheek.

It was sweet, like cherry juice.

I walked out the open cage door, my blade swishing as I walked through the corridors.

"Oi, Hiroki!" In the light coming from the staircase, I saw a pirate standing there. He sounded irritated.

"Damn it all Hiroki, stop fucking the whores and get up here, boss man wants to speak to all of us."

He didn't see me, hiding in the shadows and stepped down, letting the trap door swing shut and casting everything into shadows. He lighted a torch, grabbing it from a grimy wall, and swung it around.

I smiled when the light illuminated my hiding place, letting my lips stretch almost to the point of pain.

And, in the end, it took even less time to kill this one.

* * *

As I progressed up through the three lower levels of the ship to the deck, I gave myself scant amounts of time to get my eyes used to the sun. I was fairly lucky – it seemed to be a mildly cloudy day, so it wasn't as painful to my eyes as it could have been.

I was about to make my way up the built in staircase to the deck, when the trapdoor opened, and three men spilled through, each carrying two struggling, naked women.

Everything inside me went hot, spearing knives into my gut from where I stood in the shadows.

The trapdoor was open. I could easily make my way up and begin slaughtering the slavers. If I took out these ones, their fellows would surely hear and come investigate. And with a couple dozen men on the ship, not including the Captain, a brute of a man I'd only seen once, a pirate with a substantial bounty on his head, called Black Ink Donya, I would need the element of surprise.

But, but…these women had been through so much. If I could actually do something to help them...And there was music pouring from the open door, mixed with raucous laughter and shrill screams, enough to camouflage any noises.

"Fuck it," I grumbled to myself, and exploded from the shadows. I would need to be very, very quick, and go straight for the jugular.

I didn't want to hurt the girls any more than they had already been hurt.

* * *

I hid the girls in a pantry, after wrapping them up with some spare linens I found in a cupboard. They were ridiculously reluctant to let me go, clinging desperately to my arms, looking up at me with adoration shining in their eyes.

"I'll be back," I said gruffly. "Stay here, don't make a sound. What can you tell me about the rest of the pirates?"

The brown eyed girl closest to me, who had only a thin fuzz of dark hair covering her scalp, and who was the least injured of them all, nodded. "Ah, there are thirty men on deck, not counting the Captain. He has Devil Fruit Powers. His tattoos are…sentient."

I raised an eyebrow.

"You know this _how_, exactly?"

Her hesitant smile curved down.

"He likes to use it on the girls he likes…t-to make sure they don't get away," she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself in a subconscious gesture I recognized too easily.

People who were abused had a tendency to do that, like a child hiding under a blanket to keep the monsters in the dark away. A futile gesture to something they couldn't fight back against.

But unlike children, these girls had very real monsters in the dark.

I closed my eyes, raw hate boiling in my belly.

And I'd wondered if my _morals_ would hinder me in getting vengeance? And if I should _let_ _them_?

I would feel no guilt for taking the lives of these murderous rapists. No guilt that would trouble me unduly, anyways.

"Thank you," I said, not recognizing my own voice. It was cold and dark and distant. I touched the girl's face. "Thank you, all of you. When I send the other slaves down here, keep them down here and tell them to wait for me, okay?"

All six of the girls nodded, reaching out to touch the hem of my pants or whatever skin they could find, as reverent as worshipers kneeling before a golden idol.

I turned away and walked to the trap door.

I could feel Cheshire's fur under my hand as I walked into the sunlight and began to ascend a small amount of stairs to reach the main deck.

"Are you ready, Miss?" he asked, giving me a slasher's smile as I turned to look at him. He was bigger now, in preparation for a fight.

"Are you going to help me, Cat?" I asked curiously. He'd never done that before.

"Just a bit," he replied, purring contentedly. He was a good friend. He would never leave me.

"I'm ready," I told him.

The shrieks and music grew even closer. The musicians were closest to the stairs. My Vorpal Blade flashed, and new screams joined the slaves' cries, ones that trail out into moaning gurgles.

I did not introduce myself. I did not call out any fancy names.

Because before me I saw the mass of naked, beaten, soaking wet captives and I saw the bruises and welts and burns and something inside me screamed for blood. I did not have _time_ to put on a show.

So I simply attacked.

It was brutal and fast and furious and most of the men were so entranced by the naked flesh in front of them, or stunned stupid by my audacious slaughter, that I and the Cat simply mowed them down.

A few slaves perished at the hands of the slavers who were quick enough to evade me, but their advantage was infinitesimal, like a tiny plant trying to stay rooted in a typhoon. That is to say, it didn't last long at all.

Every extra drop of blood the pirates managed to score from their unwilling captives during my slaughter I made sure they paid for tenfold.

The Cat herded the slaves away, down the stairs of the trapdoor, to keep them from getting injured in the coming battle as Donya stood with a few of his living subordinates, his tattoos coming alive, twisting and twining in the air, the hateful look on his face contorting what once might have been handsome. He must never have expected to experience this sort of defeat.

"You ignorant little slut," he snarled. "You'll pay for this treachery."

"I think not," I said, smiling almost genially at him. "You're a slaver, bastard, did you honestly not expect the Universe to deliver just karma for how you treated those you decided to sell for a profit?"

He sniffed. "It was their misfortune. The Gods dictated they should be enslaved by those stronger than them. The weak are nothing but fodder for the strong. If they cannot protect themselves, then we, who are so much stronger and better than them, deserve to profit from their weakness!" He had thrown his hands up into the air, as awfully smug as any self-important televangelist.

I closed my eyes, gritting my teeth. "Then it seems we are in agreement."

I opened my eyes, to see them all looking at me in confusion. I shrugged. "The weak often must bow before the strong, I agree with that, but is not because of divine providence or some such utter _bullshit_. It's because the "strong" are so often bullies and cowards, hiding behind façades of strength to prove their strength to the world. The weak so often must bow to the strong because the "strong" have forgotten how it felt or never knew what it meant to be weak."

Donya's ghoulishly white face contorted with fury. "Are you calling me a _coward_?! You impudent whore!"

I shrugged and with barely a thought smashed my boot into the skull of the injured pirate who'd tried to stab my ankle. I grimaced, wiping the bits of cranial matter, blood, and skull fragments sticking to my boot off on his clothes. When I looked back up, I could see fear sparking in his eyes, in the eyes of his men.

"Yes, Donya, I'm calling you a coward. Can you prove otherwise?" I asked.

The four men threw themselves at me, only to be intercepted in mid-air by my laughing Cat. They went down screaming, their blood slicking the already blood-drenched deck even further. I got splattered with some of the blood and bits of flesh, but I couldn't even bring myself to care.

Donya's tattoos shot out, but my Vorpal Blade already snuck out and it cut straight through one shaped like a cobra, beheading it quite efficiently. Black ink splattered the deck, and I stepped back, not wanting it to touch my skin.

Blood could wash off, but ink was another thing entirely, and God knows I was filthy enough already.

_You've got weird priorities, _a mocking voice said in my head, all female fire with a hint of teasing Irish curved around the edges and I nearly slipped down in the muck from shock.

Leave me be, I hissed at the voice, and shook it off. I couldn't think about how familiar that voice was, how achingly familiar, or I would lose my head entirely.

Haha…"off with my head", as it were…

Donya was staring at the decapitated tattoo, holding his arm where it used to be as though he was in…pain.

I looked down at the smears of ink and felt a horrible smile curve my lips upward.

"It hurts you, when they die," I said slowly.

There was real fear in his eyes now and it was spreading over his face along with pain and fury.

"You sh-shouldn't be able to cut them! No human-crafted metal can touch them!"

The Vorpal Blade sang in my grasp, hungry as it ever was for blood and death. I pressed it to my cheek, feeling it hum against my flesh like an over-eager lover.

"Please!" Donya begged, holding his hands up in supplication. "Please, I'll give you whatever you want, don't kill me. Do you want money? I'll give you the ship, I have plenty of gold, and I'll make sur-"

His head hit the ground some distance away from his body, and all his bristling tattoos went silent, silenced with their pathetic Master's pathetic death. A pity. I thought he would have put up more of a fight than this.

I looked up, to see the black pirate flag of the ship flying proudly. A white skull and crossbones with a hideous grin bearing a painter's approximation of Donya's tattoos in dark ink.

The Vorpal Blade disappeared from my hands and a new weight enters them. The teapot in my hands was oversized, but the feeling of the curved handle in my left hand was a familiar and comforting weight. It let out a fierce roar, rumbling as I pulled the trigger and a football sized white ball left it with a resounding _pop!_

The ball exploded on contact with the flag, sending splinters of wood and cloth everywhere.

"Isn't that overkill, Miss?" The Cheshire Cat asked from behind me.

I simply smiled.

"Don't you know, Cat?" I laughed and held out my hands to the wonderfully blue sky. "There's no kill like overkill."

* * *

_"__There is a pleasure, sure, in being mad. But it is one which none but madmen know." _

John Dryden


	3. Chapter Two - A Curious Encounter

**Down the Rabbit Hole**

When a road trip ends in tragedy, I, armed with a fracturing mind, a strange assortment of weaponry, and my own sarcastic wit, must discover the secrets of my family's past and my connections to a very scary videogame in a world where pirates rule the seas and everyone, it seems, is out for my head.

**Additional Warnings:** More mental instability, foul language, blood, gore, alcohol abuse, lots of flashbacks, for now present time in Wonderland will be indicated as thus: _::…::_ from now on, flashbacks will be indicated by _-…-_, and Voices by plain _italics_. Italics will be abused. A lot.

* * *

Chapter two in our heroine's story begins, and it seems she's been quite busy pissing off the World Government and putting the fear of God into every ship unfortunate enough to carry slaves, because she has both a tendency to attract slavers and a violent hatred of said slavers.

But when our protagonist tries to take a break from her self-appointed mission, with the voices in her head, she succeeds only in getting the attention of someone she would really rather not have in the first place.

And in another place, two…beings…have a conversation.

* * *

**Chapter Two**

A Curious Encounter

* * *

There were two drawings on the Wanted Poster. Both showed the upper body of a person (front and back) wearing a black hooded jacket with the hood pulled up, facing straight ahead with his or her arms hanging at their sides. On the back of the jacket, faintly outlined in silver, was a blue-black butterfly, and shining from the shadows beneath the hood were two neon, cat-green eyes.

There was only a nickname under the drawing, "The Butterfly Demon", and the word ALIVE was inked out, the word DEAD emphasized in bold lettering underneath a whopping 140,000,000 beri bounty.

I sighed. Couldn't they have chosen a more intimidating drawing? I mean, weren't there plenty of times I'd been seen splattered with blood and guts and gore? Not that I wanted my real face out in the world, but still! It was the principle of the thing.

But then again, I was not very well liked by the marines, who would undoubtedly take utmost pleasure in annoying the hell out of me. It probably had something to do with my personal hobby – and the reason I was colloquially called the "Weirdo of the Pirate World".

It was a simple thing, really. I was – at first glance – a rather weak looking target and I was a rather fetching girl, as my time in Wonderland on the slavers' ships had drained all the excess fat from my limbs. Perfect slavers bait.

It was a regular thing, to find myself captured on some boat with assholes who wanted to sell it was the last thing those slavers ever did. I took especial pleasure in carving the life from their bones and freeing those who'd been enslaved. I didn't do it for money, though I often took prizes and money from the ships I targeted. I just did it for the slaves.

The bloodbaths, my jacket, and my teleportation moves got me the nickname "The Butterfly Demon" and my attitude towards treasure got me the other one.

I rolled my eyes and continued on my way from the wanted posters board, taking occasional swigs from a silver flask bearing a skull and crossbones carved onto the front. It held spiced rum and it was some of the best I'd ever tasted. I'd stolen it from the last captain I'd slaughtered.

A man's voice spoke in my head, the force of it ringing my eardrums. _Damn it, you're too young to be drinking! The hell's wrong with you?_

"Go fuck yourself," I growled at the air, swaying a little. "I can't fucking die, anyhow, so what the fuck do you care?"

Well, I didn't know if I could die, but to date I'd been shot, stabbed, garroted, bashed in the head, hit with a cannon ball, beaten, broken my spine, and I simply regenerated in a cloud of blue black butterflies.

So dying really didn't seem likely.

A woman's voice joined the man's, this one softer, but flavored like the man's at the edges with the informal accent common to those who'd grown up both poor and urban. _Girl, you need to take better care of yourself. If you die, what do you think'll happen to Wonderland?_

I paused, then sighed.

"Sorry Liz," I whispered, ignoring the looks I was getting from passersby as I wandered down the street of the town I had stopped at after my last slaughter. "But I have to help them, the slaves, y'know. I can't just let them suffer."

I could see her in my mind's eye, sitting proudly on the Red Queen's throne, shaking her head at me. _That's not what I said, an' you know it. I'm proud of you for rescuing the slaves. We all are. But you need to take better care of yourself or you'll self-destruct._

"So?" I snorted. "Man, does it look like I care about that shit? I snap, I snap. It's not a matter of if, Liz, but _when_ at this point."

_You told us you wanted to get vengeance on those who promoted slavery in ways not even our world did, habibti_, beloved_. Don't expend your life or your fragile sanity before that, all right?_

I closed my eyes. The newest man's voice was warm, like homemade caramel, and tasted sweet to my ears. It never failed to leave a burning sort of longing knotting in my throat and the sting of tears in my eyes.

"Okay, Muhammad," I whispered in a tiny voice. I sighed, and rubbed a hand over my face.

I was so tired.

I wrapped my arms around myself after tucking my flask back in my jacket pocket and could almost pretend another's arms were wrapped around me instead, and a gentle kiss was laid on my jaw as though I was made of fine porcelain, warming me from the inside to out like no alcohol could ever do.

Then I opened my eyes and continued on.

I hadn't been warm in a long, long time.

* * *

I had hitched a ride to a cluster of islands called Soratega with a fisherman who regaled me with tales about his time with his wife, and who reminded me greatly of my own grandpa. It was good to know there was still some good humans left in the world.

The town had several seedy taverns, much to my delight. The one I'd chosen to find, called The Blue Tuna for whatever reason, was in all respects a dive bar, but the glasses were clean and the booze was excellent and best of all, the bartender didn't give me shit about my probable age like others had.

And the food wasn't half bad, I thought to myself, sucking down the rice balls stuffed with pork.

Belly stuffed full and head spinning from the rum, I leaned back against the wall from my corner table, surveying the room and its occupants. It was a fair-sized room, with cracked and dark walls and an even darker floor. Scattered around were about a baker's dozen of round, wooden tables and three chairs to each table.

The bartender stood behind a sturdy bar made from reinforced wood and stone. The walls behind him were covered in bounty posters, which would have made me sweat, but I didn't see my own face up there.

Which made sense, as the bounty on my own head was still a fairly recent thing, and probably hadn't gotten to all the islands in all the seas yet.

That was good. I wanted to relax for a spell before I went after the next slave ship.

I felt a smile curve my lips as I briefly fantasized about going after the crown jewels of slavery: Mariejois, the "Holy Land" of the cursed Tenryubito.

If there was ever a people who deserved to feel my rage upon their heads, it was them. A while ago I'd snuck onto a ship bearing a Tenryubito and his slaves, just to see if they were as bad as the tales had said and my own memories told me.

_-…He kicked the girl in the face. "Sshtupid whore!" he slurred out. "You ssshould be grateful to sshervice me whenever I call for you!" He turned to a suited man standing beside him, who was nodding fervently to whatever the fat, slobbering World Noble said._

_"__Throw her overboard. Let the Shhea Kings eat her." The woman began pleading, sobbing helplessly for mercy. She was very beautiful, I noticed, ghosting to a position to help the girl without revealing myself, and this fat-arsed fool was going to feed her to Sea Kings? Christ Almighty, what a waste that was._

_Then she looked up and her eyes were blue. Blue like Sinead's were, wide and terrified as they had been when she had disappeared with the rest of my family in all but blood into the ocean and something inside me snapped._

_I let out a feral sounding roar, Vorpal Blade already in my hand as I leapt towards the white-suited Noble, more blinded with rage than I'd ever been in my entire life._

_I would save her, I had to save her, and I would murder this World Noble for _daring_ to touch her…-_

The wood of the table creaked ominously in my grip, and I had rein my temper back in before I did some serious damage.

I had saved the girl – and the other slaves - slaughtered everyone else, and had sunk the ship. I had also discovered I had a minor talent for magics, though it was one I hadn't really explored to see if there was anything else I could do. It had allowed me to change the slaves' brands (the Hoof of the Flying Dragon, I think it was called) which would have otherwise kept them on the run for the rest of their lives.

I finished the rest of rum and sighed, standing up, only to blink as the room swayed a bit.

I'd had a bit too much, it seems. I shrugged. I would have to find a hidey-hole to sleep it off, and began to sway my way to the door. I'd go hide in the forest by the beach I'd seen coming in. Or maybe that nice fisherman was still here and would be willing to let me sleep in his boat for a night?

The door opened and it was pure instinct that sent me scuttling back, hiding in the shadows.

_Habibti, I think it best if we exit out the back door._ Muhammad's voice was urgent in my head, and I could almost feel Liz and Isaac nodding alongside him.

But I couldn't move. A group of garishly dressed pirates had entered the bar, and my bulging eyes couldn't stray away from them.

They wouldn't have looked out of place at a KISS concert, what with all ghoulish make-up, tight clothes in all the colors of the rainbow, and every sort of flamboyant and attention-grabbing accessory you could think of, from spiked capes to tall headdresses and lots of jewelry.

I would have keeled over laughing at the absolutely ridiculous picture they made if I hadn't been so shocked at just who they were.

It had never occurred to me, never really _registered_ in my mind, even though I'd killed _plenty_ of pirates, been across most of the Four Seas, pissed off the _World Government_, had a bounty worth 140,000,000 _beri_, and had faced more than my share of those with _Devil Fruit_ powers. I'd simply floated through life without consciously recognizing that I was in a _completely different world_, one I'd known well from my days as a rabid otaku.

The red-haired Eustass Kid, looking every bit as arrogant as my memories of the manga remembered him as being - though a great deal younger - swaggered in, and knocked one of the patrons off his chair, stealing it for himself. His crew spread out around him, some taking chairs of their own. The masked man who took a position behind the ginger was Killer. I didn't remember the rest of his crew's names, though.

"Hey, bartender!" The redhead called out as I began inching my way in the shadows to the back door. "Bring us some booze, my throat's dry."

This must have been a time before Kid had much of a reputation, because the bartender just scoffed. "And why the fuck should I do that, brat?"

A vein pulsed in Kid's jaw, and I watched, utterly fascinated, as Killer seemed to teleport and smashed the bartender's head into the stone. It wasn't too hard, as the man managed to keep on his feet, before Killer smashed his head into the wall behind him, knocking him out cold. The masked man proceeded to toss to Kid and the other pirates several bottles of rum that had been behind the bar.

"Hey! Where the hell do you think you're going?" I managed to move out of the way before a throwing knife impacted with my head. Instead, it embedded in the wall. It had come from one of Kid's subordinates.

_Oh, fuck._ Isaac and Liz whispered in unison.

I pulled my hood over my head and stepped from the shadows.

"And what's it to you?" I asked quietly, my voice taking on the cadences of the Cheshire Cat. It was the voice I'd used often to disguise myself while in this persona. "I was just here for the booze."

I'd gotten Kid's attention. "Don't you know who I am?"

I cocked my head to the side, readying myself for a fight. "No. And I don't much care."

Did Kid have his powers at this time? If he did, he would be at a disadvantage, as there was no metal I could see at this point. But then again, he had _Killer_, so I doubted he would be at much of a disadvantage at all.

Or, I thought in straight amusement as Kid pulled out his flintlock pistol and aimed it at me, he could just shoot me. That's a way of doing it.

"Who are you?" Kid asked.

I rolled my eyes. "None of your business, boy-o."

I dropped to a crouch as Killer _moved_, his swords out and flashing, leaving long gouges in the wood behind me. I fell forward, planting my hands against the wooden boards of the floor and shot my legs up, grabbing Killer's head between the sides of my feet, and let myself fall, using momentum to throw Killer into the wall behind the bar. I flipped up, phasing through the throwing knives that came my way in a cloud of blue-black butterflies.

Kid's subordinates – beyond Killer - apparently had some skill as a fighter, because two was there right after the knives had gone harmlessly through me, one with a stitched lips and the other wearing a headdress I thought wouldn't have been odd on an old fashioned medieval executioner, daggers in their hands and lunging towards me.

I stepped past the initial strikes, allowing what did get past my guard to phase through the butterflies, before I danced back into their space. I didn't use my Vorpal Blade for the attack.

After all, I had to practice hand-to-hand or I would be in trouble if I ever found myself without my weapons someday.

The fiery Irish voice that spoke in my head was a relief, helping me to aim my strikes like a laser-guided missile system. Sin' had always been the best at martial arts and in Wonderland, she was my main teacher.

_Step straight into him, disorient him by how close you are, then get him in the sternum. Back up, and as he's falling, chop him in the neck. Good, he's down for the count_. Sinead's voice was calm as I followed her instructions. _Phase – Stitches is a fire-breather._

Sure enough, the pirate with the stitched lips opened his mouth wide and shot a stream of fire. I phased through the initial blast and ducked low, before crashing an uppercut directly into his chin, knocking him skyward to land and crash through some of the round tables.

I managed to get my Vorpal Blade up in time to block Killer's blades and to knock him back. I bent my knees, Blade up in front of my chest, watching the pirates warily.

The bartender and the other patrons had vacated the bar. Smart guys, I thought sourly.

"Enough!" Kid barked, and immediately his pirates backed away from me. He turned to me, and there was something in his eyes, something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up.

"You're the Butterfly Demon," he said, smirking. "You're a lot better looking than your poster."

It was then I realized that my hood was down. It must have fallen off sometime during the fight. I kept my face neutral, even as I fought the urge to knock my head against the wall. Hadn't I worked so damned hard to keep my own face hidden from the rest of the world? I'd known when I first started going after the slave ships that I would be known across the Grand Line, but I'd done my best to keep my own face out of it.

I'd wanted some sort of sanctuary, some sort of _disguise_ to fall back on, for the times when my anger abated and the grief swarmed back in.

And I'd revealed myself to _Eustass Kid._

Well, if I needed any more confirmation that I was a bloody idiot, here it was, staring at me like I was a prime cut of beef, or something equally ridiculous. I'd been faced with lust before – a necessary evil when dealing with slavers and slave ships – but this was something different entirely.

He smiled broadly at me, leaning back in his chair. "You aren't a part of any pirate crew, are you?"

I raised an eyebrow. Right alongside my absolute – and well-documented – hatred of slavers and Marines was an equally virulent loathing of pirates.

"If you know anything about me, Eustass Kid, then you already have the answer to your question. Why on earth are you asking me anyway? I won't be joining up with you, if that's your aim."

He frowned, but that strange something was still in his eyes.

_We need to leave._ Liz sounded anxious. _Girl…he looks at you like that bastard Richard did._

I froze.

_-…his smile was as greasy and slimy as his hair, and gave off a very unctuous air in everything he did. I didn't trust him. I'd never trusted him. Muhammad had tried to get in the office with me, but the bouncers had kept him out quite efficiently._

_"__What did my parents owe you?" I asked, wanting to get out of this place so I could get a moment to myself. I'd just buried them a week ago, by all the gods, and their wretched lawyer had been knocking on my door, Richard Demmings. He'd always done his job for my wealthy parents, making sure any problems they had got covered up._

_His smile deepened, and something horrible entered his eyes as he stood up, waddling over to where I sat perched on the edge of the uncomfortable wooden seat. He rested one hand – sweaty, cold, clammy – on my bare shoulder and I wished I'd chosen to wear a shirt that covered a little more of me than the tank-top I'd worn to get through the humid summer day._

_I closed my eyes._

_"__Your parents owed me a great deal of money. But you can pay it off quite easily my dear in one…lump…settlement, as it were."_

_His eyes were black and cold and there was something ugly in them and it made something bone-deep inside me cringe in instinctual terror._

_His fingers curled into my shoulder painfully tight and breathed words in my ear, hot and foul, a suggestion that made my insides boil with disgust and rage, before Muhammad kicked the door open, and nearly threw the man across the room, Liz and Sinead right behind him…-_

I ground my teeth. Liz was right.

I would need to make a quick exit.

This was a Eustass Kid who didn't have – or was unsure about – the usage of his Devil Fruit, and as such, was an easy opponent for a veteran of Wonderland. But as I knew very well he would become the Eustass Kid of my memory, I definitely did not want to do anything to encourage these embers of obsession I saw burning in Kid's eyes.

Kid stood up and all but _swaggered_ his way over to me. I noticed – to my displeasure – he was easily a good foot taller than me.

What on Earth did the fan girls back in the other world think was attractive about this gussied up _peacock_ of a man? He was rude, overconfident, and would become (if he wasn't already) a goddamn mass murderer.

_Girl, you're a mass murderer too. Or have you forgotten that?_ Isaac's voice was laughing.

Yeah, but I'd never had a crap-ton of squealing, teenage fan girls, either, I shot back.

_Nah, you just got Muhammad. He's worse._

Smirking, I turned my attention back to Kid, only to feel my eyes bulge out of their sockets when he slammed me back against the wall and pressed his lips to mine.

_WHAT THE FUCK_. The consensus from my friends roared in like a goddamned tidal wave from the very reaches of my subconscious, mirroring my own thoughts perfectly.

I slammed the hilt of the Blade into the side of Kid's head, knocking him flying.

He crashed into the ground and I heard him swear, but I was already out the door, zooming along as fast as I could.

I had to get out of the South Blue as soon as possible.

* * *

**Meanwhile…**

"Interesting."

In the remains of a once bustling train station surrounded by a prospering forest, two figures sat on a large, overgrown mushroom, right beneath a slightly faded sign that said: _Looking Glass Railway_ in curling letters.

One was the Cheshire Cat, his customary grin as disturbing as ever. The other was a beautiful young woman, with ink-dark, waist-length hair, neon-green eyes, and pale skin.

The woman was staring into the depths of the large crystal orb she held in her lap, where she could see the "Butterfly Demon" quite easily, running pell-mell across the island as Eustass Kid and his pirates chased her.

A curious smile played on her soft mouth.

"What's so interesting, Miss?" the Cat asked, even though he already knew the answer to that.

"Her. She's so…interesting, for lack of a better word. Not even a full year and she's done more damage than I ever did."

The Cat snorted. "I think you underestimate yourself, Miss. You're casually cruel and destructive in a way she could never be, but then again, you're more cracked in the head than she ever was. And she has more guards in her mind to keep her sane, too."

The woman shrugged. It wasn't like the Cat was inaccurate. "She's still very off. The only people she ever truly could bring herself to love were…taken from her…and all the things she's tried to keep hidden from the world are finally coming out to light. She'd didn't feel an ounce of attraction – even just pure physical attraction – to that boy when he kissed her. Just annoyance at the imposition."

"He is rather unsuitable for her."

The woman laughed. "True enough. But the normal reaction would have been one of _some_ interest, even if the response was involuntary and purely physiological. Any woman would have had some sort of response to him."

"Does she even like men?" the Cat asked.

"I'm fairly certain. After all, she had that Muhammad of hers. Though she always had a fair eye for women…No, what I think is that she just doesn't see these people as _real_. I don't think she ever could see anyone but those of Wonderland and her friends as being real people, and treats them thusly. Like the relationship she had with her parents."

"Her parents were rich bores who never understood their daughter, never understood what lay in between her ears, and of course her mother, knowing whose blood lay in her own veins and in her daughter's veins, treated her daughter like a boorish stranger at worst and a rebellious student at best. They gave her nothing to fall back on, nothing to hold her to reality that was a more palatable choice than her own eccentricities. Only her friends did that, and they really didn't mind her strangeness, in fact that encouraged it. I'm not surprised the girl is off," the Cat said idly, scuffing her claws on the mushroom's surface.

The woman sighed, sadness entering her eyes, deepening the lines around them. "She's in a bad place right now, isn't she?"

The Cat shrugged. "She adores Wonderland more than anything else. _His_ throwing her into this new world's done her absolutely no favors, as you well know. She – and her friends – would be much more content if they were here, and could start merging their Wonderland with yours."

The woman stood up, and banished the crystal orb away. "You know I have no choice in that matter," she said irritably. "I would much rather have her here than there, but even I must obey certain rules and…rulings."

"But not for long," the Cat said and stood up, his limbs melding and metamorphosing, until a purple coated, dark haired man with neon, cat-green eyes stood there, and held out an arm to the woman. She took it, the smile returning.

"Not for long," she agreed, and the two of them vanished into a cloud of blue-black butterflies.

* * *

_"__The insane, on occasion, are not without their charms." –_

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.


End file.
